Nancy Guy, Bismarck, Letter: Free Choice Act Won’t Hurt Small Businesses

I’ve seen many letters, TV commercials and e-mails about the Employee Free Choice Act. These communications claim that the act takes away the workers’ right to a secret ballot when forming a union.

Some of the e-mails claim that the act’s passage would give unions access to organize employees of small businesses , which in turn would threaten the backbone of business in America.

As a small business owner, I became concerned and did some research. The act is the first update to union organizing statutes in almost 65 years. I found that the act does nothing to change existing National Labor Relations Act laws as it applies to small business. It simply does not expand the scope of current law to encompass businesses that are not currently affected.

Currently, the decision to hold a secret ballot when forming a union rests with the employer. The EFCA takes the secret ballot decision away from the employer and simply gives it to the workers who are contemplating union organization.

The groups who sponsor the TV and radio ads claim to speak for me as a small business owner, but they do not. I agree with business owners such as Ruth Schepp from West Fargo, who employs six union workers. Ruth was quoted in the Bismarck Tribune as saying she wants her employees to be a part of her company as it grows. She wants them to feel that they have a good job and a secure job.

She wants workers to be able to form a union and to have a choice in our economy.

Finally, I searched for statistics that show labor unions are turning their organizational efforts toward small business, and I can’t find any to substantiate that claim.

As a business owner, I support the Employee Free Choice Act. From my perspective, the dire warnings of assaults on the basis of our democracy and the backbone of small business in America are a tempest in a teapot designed to mislead the general public.

The opposition is not so concerned about workers’ rights as they are about not bringing these statutes into the 21st century.

Nancy Guy

Guy owns The UPS Store in Bismarck.